Author: charlieparkerfromheadtoweb

I planned on writing this blog about 2 weeks ago. I’ll be honest, in my head, I was going to be writing a short blog entry once a week. That’s obviously not happened, and part of the reasoning for that is my incredible procrastination skills.

Each week I feel like I’m not working to my full potential. I’m not making the best use of my time. And I’m definitely not getting enough productive work done. In theory, I’ve been pretty well organised and have an ideal amount of time during the week to get my uni work and reading done, prepare for my ESOL sessions, and everything else that goes with daily life. I’m in uni “all day” Monday & Friday, and I only work from 6pm onwards Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends are a write off, I’m either off gallivanting (most recent was a concert and Christmas Markets in Manchester, and next week we’re off to stay in a Gypsy Caravan), or I’m working alllll weekend. And I mean all weekend.

I ended up finding and watching a TED talk the other day, all about procrastination. It was really interesting, totally relatable, and a seriously great way to put off doing any work for 15 more minutes. Give it a watch and see if you relate to the panic monster, or the instant gratification monkey. That poor rational decision maker doesn’t get a look in as often as it should!

Ok, now I’ve finished procrastinating by looking at the topic of procrastination, let’s get onto some proper blog writing…

My original idea for this blog post was reflecting on my 3rd and 4th Session with my ESOL in the Community group. For the 3rd session, there was only 1 learner able to attend. This actually worked out really well for the individual learner (let’s call her L.1). L.1 has the lowest English ability of our little group, so she really benefitted from being taught 1-on-1 as I was able to slow down the session to her pace, going over some simple grammar points and vocab words which perhaps the other learners would have sailed through. Continue reading →

Imagine my delight when I was told one of our assignments for uni is to write a minimum of 3 reflective blogs.

FINALLY!

I’ve been given an excuse to tap away at the keys again and upload more of my rambling thoughts and feelings onto my dusty old blog.

This blog has gone from a personal venting space (a ‘let me try and sort my life/mind out’sort of thing), to somewhere for me to pass the time while I was bored sat at my desk in work, and then it became a place for me to tell the tales (and brag about) my travels around South East Asia. Well, hold onto the handlebars kids, this rollercoaster of a blog is about to take another wild turn… It’s about to become my “Academic, reflective blog”… It won’t be as interesting or as exciting as me telling you about (prepare for some more casual bragging here) that one time I rented a scooter and rode the Hai Van Pass in Vietnam, or the time I went to a questionably named festival under the Hong Kong skyline (Clockenflap, I’m talking about you)…

Hai Van Pass, Vietnam

Clockenflap, HongKong

But, it is nice to have something that will have adapted with me and travelled through my ups and downs and twirly-whirly path of life I’ve found myself on, at the ripe old age of 25.

Anyways, I’ll quit rambling now, that’s definitely something I’m going to have to try and get better at for these posts!

Here we go, my first academic, reflective blog… enjoy!

Let me start with a genuine conversation I had with my mum and my sister:

Me:“I’m freaking out a bit! I mean, I’m going to be an actual teacher, like, I’m going to have to teach people things!”

Mum: “Why are you freaking out, you’ve done this…”

Me: “What? No I haven’t, I’ve got no experience of being a teacher, how am I supposed to handle this year?!”

Sister: “Charlie, what do you think you’ve been doing for the past year and a half…? You’ve been working at a school, TEACHING English to Chinese kids… you’re already a teacher.”

Me:“Oh… right. I mean, that didn’t count. Wait, did that count? Damn… I never thought of that.”

For my whole life, I’ve grown up saying “I’ll never be a teacher, can’t think of anything worse!”. This is basically just because I’ve seen the Continue reading →

Now it’s time to stop looking back, and look forward… In just over a week I’m flying down to Langkawi, Malaysia. I’m spending 2 nights there, and then 3 nights on a crazy small Thai island, Koh Lipe, and after that… I have no set plan. I’m going at it alone, for the first time in my life; I’ll be travelling (for more than 5 days) on my own. Just me. No childhood best friend. No travel buddy I met in China. No one. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do, and do slowly. When I was a teenager I dreamed of picking up, leaving, and having no life plan. I wanted to travel to different countries, working as I went along to earn enough money for my next destination. Sadly, as I got older, and some might say wiser (?), I realised, for me, that’s not a feasible way to do it. And you know what? It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that that’s okay.

Being in the kind of environment I’ve found myself in, surrounded by travellers, people who only know how to live internationally, people who spend every weekend, every holiday, every day off going out to explore new places… it makes you view your own adventures and plans very differently. I sometimes feel inferior to the people around me, a lesser “ex-pat” or “traveller” because my list of ticked off countries isn’t as long as theirs… You live in this constant different mind-set that the only reason you’re here, the only reason you’re working 40 hours a week and living in a country that makes every task difficult, is to get that next stamp in your passport. And, please, don’t think I’m Continue reading →

Hanoi

Arrived: Wednesday 2nd August 2017 [Day22]

Departed: Friday 4thnd August 2017 [Day24]

It was a long and bumpy journey from Sapa to Hanoi in the dark. I spent it reading, listening to music, messaging friends and just lying there. We got dropped off in Hanoi again at around 9:30pm, and walked to our 2nd home: Central Backpackers – Original. We were both a bit grump and snappy with each other (definitely hangry). I messed up the directions walking back to the hostel, and Alice kept flapping the towel which made the lift doors open again, and again, and again before I snatched the towel off her. We dumped our bags, gave each other a look, and agreed we needed to go get some food before we lost it with each other. We went to a place just down the road and had a much needed burger and chips before going back to room #7 and getting some sleep (as much as we could with the worlds loudest snorer in our room).

We woke up, grabbed some breakfast (back to our standard of eggs and bread), and then chilled in the room until around 10:30am (I felt the need to write down in my journal that I brushed my teeth downstairs in the lobby area… Again, so much pointless Parker!) At half 10, Nathan, the hostel rep who had done the Halong Bay thing with us, came to the hostel to round up the troops for the free walking tour. (This hostel was definitely one of the most helpful and handy hostels we’d stayed at. Free towels, free breakfast (even when leaving super early), a warm welcome every time, free beer hour, great Halong Bay trip, free walking tour, reserving a table for us at the Indian, and helping us book and sort out busses.)

There were quite a lot of us (maybe 20-30) on the walking tour, and Nathan led us a few doors down to a small hidden temple which was roughly 900years old and one of the oldest standing buildings in Hanoi. We couldn’t go in if we were wearing shoes or had our shoulders or knees on show (standard practice). So most of us just stood in the little opening and looked at it from the outside.

Next up was the huge cathedral. “What do you guys think? Do you like it? Think it’s beautiful? Huge? Awesome?” Nathan asked us, we all responded with nods of agreement… “Well, you’re going to feel real bad about that when I tell you it’s history!” St Joseph’s Cathedral was Continue reading →

SaPa

Arrived: Sunday 30th July 2017 [Day19]

Departed: Wednesday 2nd August 2017 [Day22]

The journey from Hanoi to SaPa was around 5 hours long, and we were lucky enough to be on a sleeper style bus again. I’ve been laughing to myself while I’ve been re-reading my journal because I really do write down every last little stupid detail. Let me give you an example, here’s a direct quote from my journal about the bus journey from Hanoi to Sapa:

I slept a lot, read a lot, lost my banana, and just enjoyed the insane views of the greenery, valleys and mountains.

Yep, I lost my banana. The hostel had given us a banana to takeaway for breakfast, and I dropped mine on the bus within the first hour or so. I took it as a lost cause, and clearly thought it was important enough to write down… I also thought I’d lost my shoes or pillow or something, but it turns out both had fallen down onto the guy below/opposite me. As we were getting off and I climbed down from my bed/seat, he sheepishly handed me a banana and my other lost items… Only slightly embarrassing! Poor fella spending 5 hours getting attacked by my falling belongings… fair play to him though for not munching on the banana!

So, yes, the journey was beyond beautiful, as you’d expect heading further north in Vietnam. We even skimmed past the Chinese boarder and both Alice and I joked about putting our multi-entry Vietnamese and Chinese Visa’s to good use and just nipping over the boarder! When we arrived into Sapa, it Continue reading →

Halong Bay

Arrived: Fri 28th July 2017 [Day17]

Departed: Saturday 29th July 2017 [Day18] (my birthday!!)

When you think of Vietnam, you think of the stunning Halong Bay (or the war, but let’s try and keep things positive). There are literally hundreds of different ways you can see this natural beauty. The tours come in all different shapes, sizes, styles and packages… but all of them are expensive. We knew this when we were looking at our options, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, there were a few things we knew we wouldn’t be able to scrimp on, there were some things that there is no way around it, you just have to pay the money to get the experience. We’d both heard a lot about the Castaways tour. A friend of mine who gave us his itinerary for when he went in 2016 said this was one of the highlights of his whole South East Asia trip. But… we weren’t sure it was for us. It was super super expensive, 2 or 3 nights, and we just didn’t have the time. So, we with the tour that the hostel we’d stayed with in both Hanoi and CatBa offered called Halong Hideaway Tour. They offered a couple of different options, and we went with the 2 day, 1 night experience. We were pretty proud of ourselves that we’d managed to work the timing of it that we would wake up in the famously stunning Halong Bay on my birthday… I’ve had some pretty epic birthdays (that tends to happen when you’re born in the middle of the summer), but, honestly, this one was one to remember…

We were picked up from our hostel on CatBa Island at around 11:30am. Nathan (an English hostel worker) took us to the coach with all our bags. The bus was full, apart from the 2 seats spare (one at the front, one in the middle) for me and Alice. We made a right mess of the whole thing, trying to get on with both our giant bags and day bags while everyone was just sat there staring at us, waiting for us to sit down. It was not our smoothest moment of the trip… I was sat next to a Canadian girl called Erin, and when we arrived at the port, we had to sit and wait for ages for the boat to arrive. We got chatting to a few other people: Jean & Nicolet (both Canadian and friends with Erin), and Abby (a British girl who I couldn’t figure out if she was young or old…).

When the boat finally arrived everyone headed down into the boat, but me and Alice were the first ones upstairs to the top, open sun deck. People soon followed us, and then Dyl (no idea if that’s how you spell it) an Irish Rep for the hostel, gave us all the lowdown of what our day entailed. After he finished his little speech, the Continue reading →

So, I’ve got 5 weeks until I leave China for the next stage of my life. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but, it’s true… After living in China (Suzhou or Guangzou-ish), for two and a half years, I’m just over a month away from packing everything up, shipping it home, and going out into the world with no plan, no agenda, no clue… As I’m sure you can imagine, I have a crazy amount of stuff to do and sort out between now and the 2nd of February (which is when I get on my one way flight to Malaysia). I’ve got Visa issues, packing issues, money issues, work issues, bank issues, apartment issues, and, honestly, the list goes on… I also have to try and finish writing up about Vietnam somewhere in this time. I still have two weeks of travel and adventures to write and tell you about, so, I’m going to try and fit in as much as I can, and skip out the dull bits! (Fingers crossed… I do have a horrible habit of going into painstakingly boring detail about each day, I’m sorry about that!)

So, without further ado, let’s get going on part 7 of my Vietnam travels from the summer of 2017. This one starts with a 6am walk through Hanoi after the night bus from Phong Nha, trying desperately to find our hostel and a toilet to use before both our bladders exploded…

Hanoi

Arrived: Tue 25th July 2017 [Day14]

Departed: Wed 26th July 2017 [Day15]

So, the walk to the hostel was a quiet one, we were both still tired and that bathroom couldn’t come quick enough. We eventually found a super posh hotel we raided and sorted ourselves out in before getting to our hostel at around 7am. Obviously it was way too early to check in, so we just went up to the (pretty crap) communal room and chilled for a bit. Eventually we headed a few doors down to get allllllll the food at Joma Bakery. We seriously splurged and indulged ourselves here, a couple of times, but after the night bus, we were feeling sorry for ourselves, so we went all out… and my god, it was so good!

A cinnamon roll the size of Alice’s head…

After sitting in a food coma for a while and getting our bearings on the map from the hostel, we decided it was time to see some of Hanoi! Sword Lake was just around the corner so Continue reading →